Meaningless Acts?

District Attorney General Bill Gibbons, the subject of this week's
Flyer cover story, professed, when asked, to be dubious about
the Tennessee legislature's recent passage of a law allowing gun-permit
holders to take their weapons into bars

and restaurants. "I'm aware of too many cases involving mixing guns
and alcohol," gubernatorial candidate Gibbons said. So he would veto
the measure if he were already serving as governor, right?

Wrong. It would be pointless to do so, Gibbons answered, since the
pistol-packers' majority for the measure was top-heavy in both
legislative chambers — meaning that a gubernatorial veto would be
quickly overturned. Gibbons further opined that virtually all of the
state's bars and restaurants would avail themselves of a loophole
allowing them to post signs banning the bringing of weapons.

So, for all the alarms it provoked across the state, for all the
embarrassment it brought to Tennessee in the nation at large, the gun
measure was really meaningless? The district attorney allowed as how he
thought it was.

The same question occurs to us with regard to another controversial
legislative act, the overwhelming passage this week of Senate Joint
Resolution 127, which began the lengthy process of a constitutional
amendment that would prohibit any legislative act or judicial finding
by a state court that would advance abortion rights beyond those
guaranteed by the federal judiciary. In effect, the proposed amendment
would strike down a 2000 ruling by the state Supreme Court which
provided even stouter protection for abortion rights and admitted even
fewer restrictions to them than did the U.S. Supreme Court.

Proponents of the bill, which passed the House this week by a 77-21
margin and had previously cleared the Senate by an equally lopsided
margin, said the measure was needed to restore the state's "neutrality"
with respect to abortion, though some zealous pro-life proponents saw
in it the wherewithal to erect real obstacles to women seeking legal
abortions. And some legislators even smelled an opportunity to impose
legislative superiority vis-à-vis the courts, be they state or
federal. Said Brian Kelsey, the brash Republican from Germantown, on
the night the House passed SJR127: "It's not the court's job to put
rights into the Constitution. It's the people's job to put rights into
the Constitution, and that's what we're doing this evening."

Well, not really. To be sure, a constitutional amendment, if
ultimately successful, would tie the hands of the state judiciary. But
until and unless the U.S. Supreme Court itself sees fit to abrogate
Roe v. Wade — and that is beyond unlikely, given
the stated will and intent of President Obama, whose duty it is to
nominate future members of the court — nothing fundamental will
change. A Tennessee woman's right to an abortion will be protected by
the same federal constitutional safeguards as a woman's in New York,
California, or Anywhere, USA.

So is all the shrieking of hallelujahs by abortion foes and all the
gnashing of teeth by supporters of abortion rights equally beside the
point? It would appear so.

We have come to a sorry pass in self-government when the legitimate
response to acts by our elected representatives is that what they do
doesn't matter anyhow. But that would seem to be the consolation we're
reduced to.

Keep the Flyer Free!

Always independent, always free (never a paywall),
the Memphis Flyer is your source for the best in local news and information.